Inside the 'targeted operations' ICE agents carry out against undocumented immigrants
The time and staffing needed to arrest a single immigrant reveals how difficult it may be to scale up to mass deportations.
CHELSEA, Mass. — The operation begins before dawn.
More than a dozen agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement — or ICE — gear up in a parking lot in suburban Boston for what the agency calls “targeted enforcement.”
This week, NBC News was given access to one of those operations. Agents spent hours waiting for their targets to leave their homes and head to work, revealing the time and labor-intensive effort it takes for federal agents to apprehend individuals who could be eligible for deportation.
It took about 16 ICE agents an entire morning to arrest five immigrants who they said were undocumented, had criminal records, and had been released on bail by local jurisdictions instead of being turned over to federal authorities. Each of the immigrants required 40 to 80 hours of surveillance before agents made the arrests, said Todd Lyons, ICE’s acting assistant director of field operations for enforcement removal operations.
“ICE doesn’t do blanket sweeps,” Lyons insisted. “We don’t do large-scale roundups. Every individual that’s here today has come to our attention because they’ve been arrested by a local municipality for a felony or an egregious crime.”
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